


little talks

by taibhsearachd



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Character Death, Developing Relationship, F/M, Stolen Century era, they died but they're fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 07:45:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12930717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taibhsearachd/pseuds/taibhsearachd
Summary: Moments from a century together, mostly inconsequential until they're forgotten.





	little talks

**On the World of Coffee and Phantoms**

A coffee mug slid into Lucretia's peripheral vision, accompanied by the sense of a large presence suddenly looming over her. She jerked in surprise, pen tracing a sharp line halfway across the page, before she actually  _ heard  _ the low whisper in her ear.

"Magnus!"

Lucretia spun to face him, flipping her pen around in her hand and holding it in her fist as if she meant to stab him with it. "I thought we had an  _ agreement  _ about this…"

He danced a couple steps backward, one hand held up in surrender, though he kept holding out the coffee at arm's length with the other, a peace offering. "Sorry, sorry! This is the last time for at  _ least _ another couple cycles, I promise! In my defense, I  _ did _ say your name, like, five times first."

"Oh." She lowered the threatening pen, leaned forward and flipped her marred notebook closed. "Well, that one's on me, then. What's this for?"

As soon as Lucretia took the offered coffee, Magnus grabbed his own mug — and a plate with a preposterously large croissant on it  — off a nearby table and slid into the booth opposite her.

"I noticed the ghosts —"

" —phantom servants —"

" —behind the counter were getting a little antsy in your direction. Thought I'd buy you a little more time before they try to kick you out." He looked down at the now ice-cold remnants of her first coffee, the orderly sheaf of papers on the table beside it. "Uh… how long  _ have _ you been here?"

"Time has no meaning in this place," she said, expressionless, before taking a cautious sip. It had a bit more milk than she'd have ordered for herself, and less sugar, but the cinnamon in it made up for that.

"Tell me about it! I don't think anyone ever actually  _ sleeps _ around here. You know every building in this city has a coffee shop? And they're all busy, all the time. I checked."

"You did not."

The response was automatic, half-laughing, but then she paused, frowned. He had a point about the coffee shops — this was a quiet world, most simple work handled by phantom servants like those that fluttered around behind the counter here, and apparently the inhabitants preferred to spend their leisure time in cafes, if the overwhelming preponderance of them was any indication. They ranged from small, dim places with a handful of padded chairs to large and bright and airy, full of clatter and conversation; some were mostly open-air, more like parks than anything else, or attached to bookshops or bakeries, and several featured freeroaming tressym or owlbear chicks or gods knew what. The odds of Magnus stumbling into the exact one she'd camped out in were astronomical.

"Who sent you looking for me?"

"No one!" he protested defensively. "...I was lonely."

Lucretia's lips twitched upward slightly. "Lonely or bored? No organized contact sports in this world, I take it?"

"Maybe…" The word came out garbled by a mouthful of pastry. He swallowed and nodded to the notebook on the table between them. "Can I help with… whatever this is?"

"Unless you've been holding back some arcane secrets we can trade for the Light? Then no." She took another sip, set her coffee aside, and reached for her pen. "But I don't mind if you keep me company while I work."

Magnus talked, almost constantly, about the rest of the crew and plans to explore more of this world and whatever else crossed his mind; Lucretia responded absently, from time to time, but for the most part his voice faded into a pleasant background noise to her own thoughts. After a while, she started thinking aloud too, soft and half to herself; she had the feeling Magnus understood maybe one word in ten, but he listened intently, and nodded as if she made perfect sense.

  
  
  


**On the World of Dragons and Winter**

Lucretia felt the rumbling before she heard it, vibrating through the rocks and snow under her boots. The icicles still attached to the roof tinkled softly, followed a few moments later by an earthshaking roar, but she was already running for the mouth of the cave.

Solid slabs of ice fell to shatter on the stone outside. A spray of white powder like a waterfall obscured the fading daylight. Her bare hand slapped against a slick, rippled surface. A solid arm caught her just below the ribs and knocked the breath out of her as it yanked her back. She landed face down, a heavy weight on top of her, and pressed herself to the cold stone with her eyes shut tight while the avalanche roared like another dragon.

When the noise stopped, she held still for a moment, just listening to her own breath rasping in the ringing silence. Above her, Magnus grunted and pushed himself up, shaking off a loose blanket of snow. Lucretia rolled over, climbed slowly to her feet, and fought to make her eyes focus again.

The white dragon lay exactly where it had fallen, the blood spilled from its mouth and wounds half-frozen into a reddish sludge. Its lair was darker now than it had been a few moments ago, lit mostly by the Light of Creation gleaming from the hoard in the back of the cave. And the entrance… She and Magnus may not have been completely buried, but their way out was another matter.

"Well that's… not great."

A little laugh burbled out of Lucretia at the understatement. It cut off with a hiss, a sharp pain in her side. Magnus turned back toward her and caught her elbow lightly in one hand.

"Hey. Are you okay?"

"I think… something cracked when it caught me with its tail." She pressed her free hand against her side, and found the robes under her palm damp, tacky, cooling. "But I'm surprised all your limbs are still attached, so maybe worry a little more about yourself."

"Ehhh… I've had worse."

"Considering your death count, I'm struggling to find that comforting."

"Haaaah…"

That was it. That was all he said. It did not escape Lucretia's notice that this did not constitute an actual response.

Magnus cleared his throat and valiantly attempted to turn the conversation in a slightly different direction. "Maybe we can still dig our way out? Is there a spell that can—"

"Spell slots, Magnus. And you're not digging your way through an entire mountainside of snow with… what, your shield? Your bare hands?" She pulled slightly away from him, felt her knees wobble, and took a few steps backward until she felt the wall at her back. She wasn't sure she'd intended to slide to the ground, but she ended up there anyway. "There was a big… ice spire near the entrance. I cast light on it before you tackled me, so assuming it wasn't broken or buried in the avalanche…"

"The others are gonna find us?"

"If they're close enough to spot that light in the hour before the spell runs out? Sure."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

Lucretia stiffly pulled her knees up to her chest, one leg at a time, and tucked her hands into her robes. She hadn't felt it before, while she was so focused on not letting Magnus get frozen solid or eaten by a dragon, but now she could feel everything again — the sharp pain with every breath and the weight in her chest, the dull throbbing in her ankle and her hip, the exhaustion and heaviness in every limb. Not the cold so much anymore, though. There was that, at least…

She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against her knees, allowing her mind to drift rather than focusing on how much everything  _ hurt _ . The clatter of Magnus' shield being dropped onto the ice didn't concern her much — it wasn't as if he had much use for it  _ now _ , after all. It was only when she heard another metallic rattle, and then  _ another _ a couple moments later, that she lifted her head again to see Magnus, already having shed both his gauntlets, struggling to undo his breastplate straps with fingers clumsy from the cold.

"What… are you doing?"

He kept working at the straps, not even looking over, as he answered, "I want to come over and sit with you, but my armor's really cold and hard and I  _ probably _ don't need it anymore, sooo…"

With more effort than she'd care to admit, Lucretia uncurled slightly from her huddled position. "Come here, let me…"

Her hands weren't any less stiff than Magnus', but she didn't have to contort her body to see what she was doing. With the straps undone, Magnus slid out of it, sent it skidding across the icy floor to join his shield and gauntlets, and collapsed against the wall beside her. And then, before she could protest — or even really process what was happening — he pulled her into his lap.

"Wh— Magnus!"

"Hey, I'm trying to help! Sorry I like you better when you're  _ not _ frozen solid. What kind of wizard doesn't know  _ one _ fire spell?"

She snorted softly and hunched her shoulders, sinking back against his chest. He wasn't quite warm, but he did dull the bite of the cold where their bodies touched. "The kind who spends most of her time around very flammable books. And travels with someone whose repertoire seems to consist  _ entirely _ of fire spells."

Lup should have been here with them. Lup should have been here  _ instead _ of her, but she'd been so pleased with herself for locating the Light, so worried she'd lose track of it before Lup and Taako could get there to help…

Her vision blurred with angry tears, and she swiped at them with a sleeve before they could freeze on her lashes.

"Lu?" Magnus asked softly. "You know I was joking about the spell thing…"

""It's not that. I— I was stupid and reckless, dragging you out here alone, and I'm no good in a fight and I shouldn't be out here  _ anyway _ …." The words kept tumbling out, her breaths coming faster and faster; she realized, dimly, that she was panicking, but couldn't clear her thoughts enough to  _ stop _ . "It's my fault we're both going to die here, and I'm  _ so _ sorry, Magnus—"

"You didn't drag me into anything," he said firmly. "You know I don't need anyone to do  _ that _ . It's my job to keep you guys alive to do what you have to — not your fault I screwed it up this time." He was quiet for a moment, and his arms tightened around her. "But the Light's safe. The others have plenty of time to find it. So dying's not… the  _ worst _ thing ever. I do it all the time!"

"I don't." Her voice came out sounding smaller and softer than she expected. She'd died before, in three other cycles, but every time it was at the end, and it took her by surprise. She'd never had time to stare it in the face like this before.

Magnus reached into one of the wide sleeves of her robe to take her hand. "I'll be here. Just try to breathe, alright?"

She nodded, and tightened her grip on his hand. Her head had started spinning, somewhere in the middle of her rambling, and suddenly Magnus felt like the only stable part of the world, so she closed her eyes and laid her head against his shoulder and let it spin.

The cold sank slowly into her bones.

The sounds of shifting snow and creaking ice grew more and more distant.

She heard Magnus' voice, as if from far away.

"See you on the Starblaster."

  
  
  


**On the World of Quest and Dream**

Lucretia kept her eyes on her feet as she walked, her own face reflected off the silvered-glass mosaic beneath her in a thousand splintered fragments. Most of the glass pieces fitted together so tightly there were no sharp edges to cut, but occasional craters marked the otherwise smooth surface, each of them surrounded by glittering shards — and while injury in dreams might not hurt her as much as it  _ should _ , it would still carry over to the waking world.

Another shape flickered in the mirror, bright red instead of the deep blue-and-purple sky or her own more subdued robes, and she looked up with a smile. Magnus always found them in dreams when he wanted to.

"Hey," he said, moving to her side without any particular concern for the splintered glass. "You kind of passed out on the couch, but I didn't want to move you or anything in case you were doing something important in here…"

Lucretia inclined her head to one side and arched an eyebrow. "So you took a nap to check on me?"

He shrugged, a slightly embarrassed smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Yeah, I had Barry knock me out. He had the spell slots to spare."

Lucretia let out a sharp, startled laugh. "You didn't have to do that. I was just… walking." She didn't often get to do that in the waking world, not without leaning on her staff, stopping to sit and catch her breath, dealing with the exhaustion afterwards… Leaving this world at the end of the cycle would come as a relief in some ways — she  _ did _ look forward to a peaceful night's sleep, and having dreams to herself again — but this, being able to forget the limitations of her body and just  _ be _ for a while, she would miss.

"Find anything fun?"

Magnus glanced around at the dreamscape they'd found themselves in: a chain of round islands not much larger than the Starblaster, all of them gently bobbing as if floating on a sea that seemed to be more mist than liquid. Arched bridges spanned the gaps between them, leading to an island full of trees with leaves that sang like wind chimes, and then a garden of delicate flowers formed from peppermint, and beyond that a hollowed hill containing only black fabric-draped walls and bright neon lights. Other parts of the dreaming were busy, full of dreamers and the kinds of creatures that could only have been born of dreams and nightmares, but here it was quiet — the only sign of life that Lucretia had noticed, besides herself and Magnus, were the dark shapes that moved deep in the smoky sea.

"I don't know about  _ fun _ … but I've been thinking about the Light."

She led Magnus to the edge of the island, where the mist swirled against the glass almost — but not quite — like the tide washing on a shore. In the distance, always visible and always impossibly out of reach, was the Light of Creation, shining like a lighthouse from the top of a spire of stone. It hadn't created this world's odd intersection between the ethereal and material planes, the reason every sentient being walked in a shared dream when they slept — that had been the native inhabitants of this world, long before the Light or the Starblaster had arrived here — but that intersection was what had made the Light land on the ethereal plane instead of the material. Recovering it was proving… difficult, but she doubted the Hunger would have the same problem.

"It's always there, everyone's always trying to reach it, but... you can never get there before you wake up. I don't think it's possible, moving straight toward it. But I keep dreaming about the sea." She looked down, into the depths. It only got darker down there, and the dark shapes gliding through the smoke weren't inviting in the least, but maybe… "I think we might want to try a more oblique angle at this."

Magnus snorted. "I like how you say that like you've ever suggested a straightforward plan in your life."

"Oh, hush." She couldn't help smiling as she turned to face him, though. "What I'm  _ saying _ is… the Light's embedded at the center of the ethereal plane, as far as we can tell. Or whatever this world's turned the ethereal plane  _ into _ … Space is so fluid here, I don't think we can get to where the Light is by just moving toward what we  _ see _ . I want to go deeper into the dream."

"What,  _ now _ ?"

Lucretia shrugged. "Why not?"   


He just looked at her open-mouthed for a moment, started to say something and then stopped himself, as if grasping for a reason. Finally, he said, "'Cause that's where all the nightmares live! And if you get killed when you're dreaming, none of us really knows what  _ happens _ to you, and… Lucretia, dying  _ sucks _ . It's not just going to sleep like the last time, it's… Let me come back here later. I'll bring Lup or someone and—"

"What, so  _ you _ can get killed instead?" she interrupted, obscurely offended. Maybe she wasn't a fighter like him or Lup — even Taako was more use in a fight — but she'd picked up more useful spells since the ice cave, and maybe in dreams none of that mattered anyway. The nature of this plane was malleable; here, she didn't  _ have _ to be any more vulnerable than the rest of them, if she could just talk the dream into agreeing with her version of how things should be… and she was a storyteller, after all.

Magnus didn't seem to consider any of that. "Well…  _ yeah _ , if someone's going to… it's kinda what I'm here for…"

Lucretia's jaw tightened. Last cycle, she'd watched him bleed out, Merle wrist-deep in his guts. When she wrote about it afterward, those pages had ended up nearly illegible, her hands had been shaking so hard at the memory. If he thought she was going to let him decide his job was being the one they could afford to  _ lose _ …

Slowly, deliberately, Lucretia took a step back until she felt something cool swirling around her heels, extended both middle fingers, and let herself tip backward into the sea. She caught a flash of alarm on Magnus' face, saw him start to lunge for her, and then the mist closed over her head.

It was colder than she expected — not like water, it didn't have that weight, that pressure, but it startled her into a gasp. She half expected to choke on it, but breathing came easily enough; there was air, or the illusion of it, just a bit clammy. She flailed her arms and legs, struggling to maneuver without anything as solid as water to push against, but she was floating, not falling, and with a little effort she was able to turn herself in the direction she thought was down.

The dark shapes still circled, huge and imposing, and one or two seemed like they might be drifting closer to the surface to investigate her… but something was glowing down there. A light, obscured by heavy fog, but steady. Lucretia smiled, let her breath out slowly, started to sink toward it— 

And woke up to a sharp ache in her back, a heavy hand shaking her shoulder, and Magnus' face right in front of hers. She groaned and shoved him in the chest; she might as well have tried shoving a wall.

"You know I'm just going back down there tonight." He couldn't exactly  _ stop _ her, after all.

" _ I know _ ." He sounded exasperated, but the look on his face was something different, and Lucretia, still groggy, struggled to pin it down — not surprise or uncertainty or fear, but maybe adjacent one of those, or all of them… "Let me come with you."

  
  
  


**Interlude**

We see the Starblaster, perched on a tower of smooth black stone. We see Magnus and Lucretia alone on the open deck, standing together at the side railing and looking out over a twilit jungle, a tangle of dark vegetation broken by blue flashes of bioluminescence and the yellow lights of what must be some kind of city in the distance.

Magnus' black eye is still healing, right now an ugly shade of green. Lucretia's out of her robes for once, loose curls sticking to her bare shoulders and the back of her neck in the humidity, and her eyes are on the sky.

She says something, a little wistful, about how much it looks like home, how this might be the closest thing to their own sky that they ever see again.

"Yeah," Magnus says, distant and distracted. He's not looking at the sky at all, but by the time Lucretia glances toward him he's turned away from her again. He stands there for a moment, staring toward the city lights like he's not even really seeing them, and then abruptly swings around and walks to the stairs without another word.

Behind him, Lucretia bites her lip and winces as he vanishes belowdecks.

  
  


Another world, in a dusty training yard, near a palace on a hill.

Magnus is shirtless, spinning a dull training sword in one hand, and grinning like he hasn't had this much fun in  _ years _ . The poor soldier he's been sparring with stands there for a moment, panting and  _ glaring _ , and then lunges at Magnus with a frustrated shout. Magnus is probably a decade younger than most of the palace guard and has easily twice the practical experience, and many of them seem to be taking the disparity between his skill and apparent age as a personal affront. Magnus catches the first blow on his shield, and the yard fills with the crash and clatter of metal on metal again.

Lucretia's perched on a fence at the edge of the yard, notebook braced against her knee, pen flying across the paper as she sketches the line of his back mid-lunge, the curve of an upraised arm. She's nearly covered two pages in those fragmented images before Magnus notices she's even there, but he glances over once, happens to meet her eyes, and holds them for a second too long; the flat of his opponent's blade catches him hard in the side of the head, and he lands sprawled in the dirt.

Lucretia drops her pen and claps her hand over her mouth. He doesn't get up immediately, just lies there staring up at the sky (and for a moment she doesn't breathe, wondering if he  _ is _ going to get up)... and then he rolls to his knees and starts to push himself to his feet, ignoring the hand the guard offers to help him up.

He mutters something to the guard that Lucretia can't hear, his face gone bright red, and leans down to retrieve his sword out of the dirt. Lucretia hops down off the fence and starts to cross the training yard to meet him, maybe check if he's concussed, but she hasn't taken two steps before he turns and starts to walk briskly away without even looking back at her. She pulls to an abrupt stop, hugs her notebook against her chest, and doesn't follow.

  
  


The Starblaster again, all seven of them around the table for dinner — and with the Light recovered with months to spare, they all have room to breathe again, for a little while. Taako's teasing Barry relentlessly, and eventually Lucretia mutters something under her breath that makes Lup nearly choke on a piece of chicken, and Magnus abruptly gets up from the table and leaves the room. Lucretia's face falls.

Lup leans in toward her a little later, once she's caught her breath again, and asks, "What's wrong, buttercup?"

And Lucretia just shakes her head slightly and says, "Not now."

She's not surprised when she steps into her room later that evening to find Lup already perched on her bed waiting for her. Lup grins and pats the covers beside her, like Lucretia needs the invitation when she's standing in her own goddamn bedroom.

"Okay, so? Spill."

Lucretia closes the door behind firmly her. "Lup…"

"Nuh-uh. You said later, it is now  _ later _ , and I'm not leaving until you tell me why you've been sulking all night."

"I haven't—" she starts to say, and then stops. After a moment she sighs, and collapses on her bed next to Lup. "I think Magnus is… upset with me? Or angry, or…"

Lup snorts. "What could you possibly have done that would make Magnus Puppydog Burnsides angry for more than, like, a minute and a half?"

" _ I don't know _ !" she groans, and flops backward onto the bed with her hands over her face.

She tells Lup about how he'll walk out of a room she's in, without a word of explanation — not all the time, not even  _ often _ , but enough that it stings. How conversations trail off awkwardly, how what used to be companionable silence between the two of them just feels strange and out of joint now. How every now and then he just won't  _ look _ at her. And Lup purses her lips and pats her knee and tells her not to worry, that she'll deal with it. Lucretia is honestly a little scared to ask what she means by that.

  
  


Lup grabs Taako in the kitchen the next morning and says, "I need you to ask Magnus what his problem with Lucretia is."

Taako eyes her warily and answers, "And you can't do this yourself be _ caaause _ …?"

"Because I'm Lucretia's best friend, and it's hard to get a straight answer if he's worrying about being set on fire."

Taako considers briefly, then shrugs. "All right, sure." The details aren't his problem.

He corners Magnus later, and Magnus stares at him and starts stammering something about how he doesn't have a problem, who would have a problem with Lucretia, and slowly trails off when he realizes Taako's not buying a word, and would probably rather be anywhere but here, having this conversation, right now.

Magnus takes a breath and starts over. "Okay, so you know how—" He breaks off, palms pressed together, and reconsiders. "Lup sent you? Yeah, I'm gonna go talk to her."

"Okay," he says to Lup when he tracks her down, "so you know how sometimes, when I have a  lot of feelings and I don't really know what to do with it, I just kind of… punch something?"

She looks up from the scroll she'd been studying and shrugs. "Yeah, obviously."

"Lately… I dunno, since that year we all mostly spent on the ethereal plane? I can't… punch this. That would be… terrible. So I have to walk away, before I say something stupid, or  _ do _ something even stupider, and—"

Lup just starts laughing.

  
  
  


**On the World of Truth and Quiet**

Magnus crept up behind her in a quiet, empty hallway, catching her elbow lightly in one hand. Lucretia screamed, spun toward him, and smacked him in the shin with her staff before she realized it was only Magnus, or remembered that they were in a  _ library _ . Her scream echoed down the rows and rows of shelves (along with Magnus' yelp) while Magnus staggered and Lucretia glared, clutching her staff so hard her knuckles turned pale. 

"Magnus…" she began through gritted teeth, but he held up one hand with an apologetic, somewhat pained grimace.

"Sorry! Sorry. Gosh, you are  _ really _ good with that staff." He winced again, rubbing at his shin, and then stood up a little straighter. "That wasn't… I wasn't trying to do the sneak attack thing this time, I just wanted to talk to you. Alone. I, uh, talked to Lup—"

Lucretia groaned and leaned forward, letting her forehead thump lightly against her staff. If she kept her head down and her eyes closed, she wouldn't have to look him in the eye and make this conversation any more awkward than it had to be. "Damn it, Lup. Look, whatever she told you, I didn't  _ ask _ her to—"

"Hey, it's okay! She, uh, actually didn't say much—didn't threaten to set me on fire even once, which I really appreciate, for the record—"

She sighed and lifted her head again. "You know not every conversation you have with me is 'on the record', right?"

"Yeah, I'm really hoping this one isn't…"

Lucretia took a step back, something in her chest slowly sinking. She wanted to know what was wrong, she  _ did _ , so she could begin to fix it—they couldn't keep dancing around each other for the rest of their endless foreseeable future—but faced with actually  _ having _ the conversation…

"I don't know if this is the best place to—"

"No, listen, because if I don't say it now I'm gonna forget something, or it's gonna come out bad, or… maybe it's gonna come out bad anyway, but…" He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for something, and Lucretia, unconsciously, did too. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I guess I kind of hoped you wouldn't notice anything was different, which… is stupid, because you notice everything, but I didn't want things to get weird, and I guess I just kind of made it  _ more _ weird, 'cause every time I'm around you it's like—"

He didn't seem to be planning to stop for breath any time soon, and this monologue kept switching between trains of thought so fast Lucretia's head spun trying to follow it. She held up a hand.   


"Magnus, just… tell me what the problem is. Please."

"Sorry," he said, his face going slightly pink. "I'm trying to say… I really wanna kiss you. Sometimes I look at you and that's all I can think about and oh my god why are you looking at me like that?"

"Are you seriously telling me that you've been running away from me for a cycle and a half now because you don't know how to  _ ask me out _ ?" Something fluttered low in her stomach, frustration and relief and wanting.

Magnus made a face somewhere between a grimace and a cautious smile. "Maaaybe?"

She huffed softly, a nervous not-quite-laugh. "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you hesitate to do… anything."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to screw it up."

"Here's your chance to get it right," she said, and stopped breathing the moment the words were out—but she watched Magnus' eyes go wide, and his smile went a bit crooked, and then his mouth was on hers, and she decided maybe that was the right thing to say after all.

She kept both hands clasped firmly around her staff, distantly concerned she might fall over if not for that support, but one of Magnus' hands rested against the side of her neck, thumb tracing the line of her jaw, and the other wrapped lightly around her upper arm, one more thing to hold her steady. He hadn't touched her in at least a year, not beyond brief brushes in the hall, and she felt a brief surge of indignation that he'd avoided it for so long—she'd half forgotten how  _ warm _ his hands always were (even in that icy cave, the warmth of him was the last thing she remembered before the dark closed in), how being this close to him felt like safety (like just for a moment, she could stop running, stop fighting, just  _ be _ ), and how much she'd  _ missed _ it. Lucretia made a soft, involuntary noise in the back of her throat and leaned closer, pulse pounding hard and fast in her throat and her wrists, and—

Someone cleared their throat behind her.

Lucretia and Magnus flew apart; Lucretia backed into a shelf, and Magnus made a show of studying the books nearest him, part of a section on divination. The librarian who had interrupted them rolled his eyes and brushed past them, clearly more intent on his duties than their personal affairs, but Lucretia still felt her face flush hot, and pointedly avoided meeting his eyes.

Magnus turned back around when the librarian had gone, scrubbing a hand over his face in a half-hearted attempt to hide a grin. Lucretia tried to glare, but found a smile tugging at her lips too.

"I  _ did _ say we should take this somewhere else," she whispered.

Magnus chuckled and reached for her again.

  
  
  


**On the World of Music and Memory**

Lucretia sketched the rough shape of a tower and then paused with her pencil hovering over the page, her eyes unfocusing while she tried to call to mind the skyline of a home she'd left behind half a century ago. It surprised her how difficult it was to remember—when they first left, after the Hunger came, she'd been so focused on documenting every aspect of the new worlds they found that she'd never thought to look back.

"Shit," Magnus said, across the room where he wouldn't accidentally cover her in wood shavings. It sounded so calm that Lucretia didn't even look up right away, intent on her sketch; she added another tower beside the first, adjusted the slope of a roof, but something still looked wrong.

She sighed softly, set her pencil down and glanced over to ask what was wrong—but it didn't take more than a glance to make the answer to that question perfectly clear. Magnus sat there with an irregularly shaped block of wood in one hand, a knife in—actually  _ in _ , as in physically penetrating—his other hand, and a shirt absolutely covered in blood.

Lucretia yelped and jumped to her feet, snatching a discarded robe off the back of her chair before she lunged toward him.

"What happened?"

"Knife slipped," Magnus said with a little shrug, as if that was so obvious it wasn't worth asking.

Lucretia growled under her breath and pressed the robe against his palm where the blade entered it, trying not to jostle the knife too much. Should she pull it out? Should she call Merle? At least the robe wouldn't show the bloodstains much, if it couldn't be washed out later…

"Why didn't you  _ say _ something?"

"You seemed busy!"

"You bleeding all over yourself is a  _ slightly _ more pressing matter than the painting, Magnus." She flicked a glance up at his face before focusing her attention on his hand again, carefully pulling the robe back to get a better look at the damage. The blood welled up so fast she pressed it back down again almost immediately, but it looked like he'd cut across his palm before the blade actually embedded itself  _ in _ his hand. Her stomach lurched a little at the the thought of the damage he could have done to the tendons, how much blood he was losing… "I swear to all the gods, if you somehow manage to die on  _ Art World _ …"

"I'm not gonna  _ die _ —" Magnus began. He cut off with a wince and a hiss as Lucretia grabbed the hilt of the knife, gave a hard yank to free it, and applied more pressure to the wound. She stared him straight in the eye and let the knife clatter to the floor.

"Well, you did seem perfectly content to sit there bleeding… Put down the duck and hold this around your hand, okay?"

"It's not a duck," he muttered, but he set aside whatever he'd been carving and took over holding pressure against the wound. As soon as Lucretia's hands were free, she stood up, tugged Magnus to his feet by his sleeve, and steered him toward the door while he continued, "I kind of think you're making too big a deal about this, Lu. I've been stabbed  _ way _ worse than this. And survived, even!"

"True, but not comforting. I'd rather you spent the rest of the year with two functional hands…" She reached over to loop another fold of the robe around his hand. It was probably best if they at least  _ tried  _ not to leave a trail of blood through the halls. "Can you still flex your fingers?"

"Ow. Uhhh… kind of. What, you think it's really gonna hurt us that much if I'm a little broken this cycle? We all know  _ I'm _ not gonna get us the Light with my presentation, and I don't see us getting into any big fights before we get out of here…"

She stopped walking in the middle of the hall and gave him a long, level look. There were things she should say here, words she couldn't quite put together right now while Magnus was bleeding and anyone could walk by… so instead she set a hand against his shoulder, smearing more blood on his shirt (which seemed like a lost cause at this point), and tried to hold back a smile as she said, "Magnus? I have other uses for your hands."

"Wh—  _ Oh _ . Oh. Okay, I guess… Yeah. Let's go ruin Merle's dance class, then."

Two weeks later, she noticed the bright glint of polished metal on Magnus' workbench: a thin silver chain, too delicate for anything Magnus would ever wear, and a pale wooden pendant attached to it. She picked it up carefully, cradling the pendant in her palm. He'd made a coin-sized shield inscribed with a sunburst, symbol of a goddess of protection and creation they hadn't encountered in any world but their own; the lines were a little shaky in places, but the surface of the wood had been sanded so smooth that it felt soft under her fingers.

Lucretia ran a thumb over it lightly, and smiled. The varying colors in the spalted white oak helped disguise the stray grooves where his knife had slipped, the places where the lines wobbled…  and probably no one but her would think much of the darker smudge on one corner of the shield, only faintly reddish.

  
  
  


**Between the Worlds of Judgement and Harbor**

The ship seemed almost too loud now, too crowded. She couldn't have been happier to have her family back, to know they were  _ safe _ , at least for the moment, and that she wasn't alone… but after a year of fear and silence and bracing for the next attack, it would take some time to readjust to six other people breaking that silence just by existing.

Lucretia slipped off to her room once the hugs and rushed explanations were over, and the ensuing chatter had died down, and for the first time since they'd arrived on the world of the Judges, she warded her own bedroom door. She could still hear footsteps outside, the twins' voices, the dull rumble of the ship's engines, reassurance that they were all still there, but made more distant by the barrier of her magic.

The tension in her chest unwound, just a little; she could almost breathe again as she curled up on her bed, knees pulled nearly to her chin, fingers curled around the pendant at her throat. She drew one deep breath, held it to a count of five and let it out. Another, throat tightening on the inhale, breath shuddering on the exhale. And then her breath hitched, and the quiet in the room broke with a strangled sob.

She did it. She pulled them through, they were all alive and whole because of her, and that awful, lonely year was worth it. In a few hours, they would land and step out onto a new world and have to do it again: a thousand chances to fail, year after year. Just the thought of it made every part of her ache with exhaustion.

Once the tears started, she couldn't hold them back any longer, not after holding it together for the better part of a year. She cried until her stomach hurt, until her head pounded with every heartbeat, until the wracking sobs subsided into shaky gasps, and she felt… not better, exactly. Calmer, maybe. A bit empty.

She had just started to catch her breath when someone tapped lightly on the door. Lucretia jerked upright and wiped at her damp face with the heel of her palm, for a moment considering hiding under her pillow until whoever it was went away. She couldn't stay here forever, should probably be on deck when they landed, but just now…

"Lu?" Magnus called, muffled by the door and the wards. "Are you okay in there?"

After a moment of silence, Lucretia heard a soft thump, and her wards flared slightly in warning. It wasn't hard to imagine him leaning his weight against the outside of the door, head inclined slightly to rest against the wood. He'd probably wait out there all night if she let him.

"You can tell me to go away or, I dunno, throw a pillow at the door or something and I'll take the hint, but…"

She dispelled the wards with a wave of her hand, paused, and cast mage hand to unlock the door. The door swung slowly inward, at first just enough for Magnus to poke his head in — and then he saw her, still red-eyed and sniffling, and immediately stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Lucretia let out a watery laugh when she noticed Fisher perched on his shoulder, tentacles wrapped around Magnus' neck and one arm like it planned to stay there for the whole next cycle.

"I think it missed y— Oh!"

Magnus crossed the room in a couple steps and pulled her into a tight hug. She ended up with Fisher's bell squished up against her head, but it sang a soft melody at the contact, so she could only assume it didn't mind too much.

"You wanna talk about it?" Magnus asked quietly.

She opened her mouth, searching for an answer — yes, of course, there were so many things she wanted to tell him, so many things she hadn't had the chance to say to him in the year he'd been gone, but… Every word caught in her throat, before she could say anything. Lucretia pressed her face into her shoulder and shook her head.

"Not yet," she managed, a strangled whisper.

"Okay."

Magnus shifted slightly on her narrow bed, pulling her into his lap. She nestled her head against his shoulder, thinking absently of an icy cave, a dead dragon, the warmth of his body against the cold….

"You want me to stay here?" he asked, and she nodded without lifting her head.

Tomorrow they'd have a whole new world to face. New challenges. New chances to succeed or fail. Just now, all she wanted was to stay here, with Fisher nestled against her head and Magnus' arms around her and his lips against her forehead. They were alive because of her.

She did this, by herself, and, as much as it hurt, she'd do it again and again and again to see them all safely through the storm.

  
  
  


**On the World of Choice and Endings**

The bedroom door swung open without so much as a warning knock, and Lucretia snapped both journals shut reflexively, resting a hand on each of the blue leather covers. Magnus had gotten used to treating her room like it was his own, the last decade or so; given that she was in and out of his room nearly as often, normally she didn't mind if he just walked in. Normally, she didn't have anything to hide from him.

Nothing had been normal since the day Lup left.

Looking over her shoulder, Lucretia saw Magnus still standing in the doorway, hands braced on either side of the doorframe. "Uhh… are you busy with something?"

"No, no," she said quickly, already sliding open a desk drawer to shove the journals into. "Just going over some of the early cycles… I should probably stop anyway."

Magnus crossed the room to settle his hands on her shoulders. She tensed briefly, but Magnus pressed down on her shoulders, pushing his thumbs into the hard muscles between her shoulderblades.

"Your shoulders are up around your ears again, Lu."

"I hadn't noticed," she murmured, and let her head drop forward, pulling in a deep breath.

"Was it about Lup?" Magnus asked, his rough voice low, and the only thing that kept Lucretia from flinching again was the pressure of his hands on her shoulders.

She closed her eyes, and behind her eyelids saw pages marked nearly entirely black, careful redactions to protect as much as she could of their lives before the mission, preserve as much of their selves as seemed safe… But Lup's pages were nearly untouched. By the time she was done, Magnus wouldn't even recognize her name.

_ Or mine…  _

Magnus, apparently taking her silence for confirmation, leaned in to kiss the top of her head. "Okay, yeah, you've gotta get out of your room some time today. Put the pen down, step away from the desk—"

Lucretia spun abruptly in her chair and cut him off with a kiss. Her chest felt tight, too full of guilt and worry to leave room for her to actually  _ breathe _ . It wouldn't be long. She'd only have to miss him for a few months, maybe a year — a year of loneliness, empty bed and quiet ship and desperately missing his hands and his mouth and his smile and the warmth of him wrapped around her — and then they'd be together again.

It was nothing she hadn't done before.

Fisher chimed softly in his tank, a questioning note, and she drew in a sharp breath as she pulled back. Every sound the voidfish made lately sounded like an accusation, though of course he didn't know anything, couldn't possibly understand what she would use him for… and Magnus' smile, the soft "hey buddy", was even worse. She grabbed Magnus' arm and used it to pull herself to her feet, still holding on as she leaned over to pluck her staff from where it rested against the wall.

"Come up on deck with me. You're right, I could use some air."

She was panting softly by the time she made it up the stairs — she'd been sitting still much too long, gotten up too quickly — but she kept moving, one foot after the other, into the cool night air. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Magnus moving to her side, holding out an arm for her to lean on. She pretended she hadn't noticed, and tightened her grip on her staff.

  
  
  


**Home (Reprise)**

The lights never entirely went out on the moonbase, only dimmed — there was always work to do, always someone up late researching or monitoring the world that spun below, and, usually, Lucretia walking the halls like a ghost. She never slept well, not since arriving in Faerun, but tonight, with the half of her family  _ here again _ but looking at her like a stranger…

She hadn't even bothered going to bed. She'd only lie there wishing she'd been able to drop the mask for just a moment to finally hug them again, thinking about how much they felt like strangers to  _ her _ , distant, sharp-edged in ways they'd never been in their century together. The same old regrets and what-ifs, twisted into new forms by their sudden proximity. No, she wasn't about to face any of that tonight without a distraction… and in any case, she had apologies to make while she had some privacy.

Lucretia had learned how to move almost silently through the halls; even using the staff for balance, even with the hitch in her step that had never really gone away after Wonderland, she stepped lightly, and that was all that saved her from notice when she walked into the voidfish's chamber. She hadn't been expecting anyone — Johann was usually long gone by this time of night, and no one else ever came to the voidfish without a reason — so she made it several feet past the door before she really processed the broad figure silhouetted by the blue light from the tank.

Her heart dropped immediately. She didn't have to see his face to know it was him.

For a moment, she thought about backing out of the room and running. Here and now, alone with only Fisher in the near-dark, she couldn't trust herself to be the Director with him; she could lock herself in her office, fall asleep at her damn desk, wait to face him in the light of day. But there was exhaustion in the set of his shoulders, and even after a decade, she hesitated to walk away from that.

Fisher hummed, a low noise that somehow managed to sound reproving, and Magnus turned before she could make up her mind to retreat. Lucretia's hands tightened on the staff; she straightened her back and lifted her chin reflexively.

"Magnus," she said stiffly.

"Uh… hello, Madame Director," he said after a momentary pause. "Sorry, am I…  _ allowed _ to be here? It seemed like it might be restricted or something, but no one stopped me,  _ so _ …"

"I'll have to have a conversation with the guards about  _ that _ . I'm sure you could imagine what someone with the wrong intentions could do with access to the voidfish's… abilities…."

She paused for a moment, all too aware of the irony of saying that to  _ him _ . Fisher's tentacles gestured emphatically, and Lucretia began to regret not bolting from the room when she had the chance.

"What  _ were _ you doing here?" she asked, too low and soft to be an accusation, but it was enough to make Magnus shift his weight nervously, casting a glance over his shoulder toward the tank.

"Couldn't sleep? And, y'know, one dome pretty much looks like another, and I just kind of ended up here…" Lucretia's eyebrows inched upward as he spoke, allowing doubt and a little disapproval to creep into her expression, and finally his shoulders slumped slightly. "I just kind of wanted to say hi. While we're not all dealing with, y'know, a bunch of memories coming back and… I think it likes it when I talk to it."

Fisher trilled, the most joyous sound she'd heard from it in years, and Magnus' expression brightened.

"See?"

"I… suppose if you'd like to come back when Johann is actually  _ conscious _ and the guards are doing their job, there's no reason you shouldn't." Her lips pressed together as she looked past him to Fisher. "It does appreciate company."

_ I'm sorry Fisher, I'm so sorry. When this is over... _

She shook her head just slightly and cleared her throat. " _ In the meantime _ , please get out of the room with my extremely powerful reality-altering jellyfish and go to bed, Mr. Burnsides." The formal address felt wrong in her mouth, but she hurried on before she could stumble over it. "I can't how soon we'll be needing your particular talents, but I'd prefer that you're well-rested when we do."

"Hey, I can't help that Merle sounds like a pissed-off owlbear when he snores," Magnus protested, but he started toward the door anyway. Lucretia didn't watch him go, just listened to his footsteps and waited for him to be out of earshot… but she heard him stop, not quite at the door, and half-turned even before he asked, "Madame Director?"

"Yes?"

"May I ask what you're doing down here at like three in the morning? Kind of doesn't seem like there's anything  _ super _ pressing going on..."

"I… don't think that's any of your business."

He grinned at her, so familiar and so welcome that if she hadn't already slipped into the Director she might have cried. "Couldn't sleep either, huh? You sure you don't want that oolong?"

_ Please _ , she thought, afraid to force out a response just yet in case it came out strangled. All she wanted was to say yes, take him to the kitchen, maybe try to recreate Lup's cocoa one more time and just listen to him talk, pretend for an hour that…

She flicked her fingers and cast mage hand, nudging him gently toward the door. "Another time, Magnus."

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [Little Talks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I) by Of Monsters and Men, and you should definitely listen to it if you feel like crying.


End file.
